10 Tips to Get Your eComm Store Black Friday Ready - 2021
PSST... Did you know that....
Average Cart Price is $89.20 on Black Friday
Peak sale hour is as 12:00 pm EST on Black Friday with 102 million sold
Since Black Friday 2019, 50% more consumers are buying directly on Shopify stores
33% of shoppers who plan to buy in Q4 will wait until Black Friday to make purchases
1. Make Your Shop Trustworthy
Trust badges, clear return policies, and the benefits of your products are all essentials to making your brand one trust! A reported 68% prefer shopping with brands they trust, so make sure you are one of them!
2. Automate Inquiries
Automate 90% of customer support queries as the influx in traffic will not give you time to answer to everyone - Don't let your shoppers go to a competitor just because you weren't there to answer a simple question!
3. Refine Your Email Sequences
Abandoned cart rates increase by 15% on Black Friday, so make sure yours is enticing enough to get them back to the shop! You will also get more signups than ever, so make sure to have a good welcome email to engage with your new potential customer. And finally, don't forget to anticipate for a higher cost for your email marketing tool due to this!
4. Identify Any Gaps in Your Current eCommerce Strategy
First you need to identify your key KPIs & understand who your most promising customer segments are! Then we fix the gaps with additional apps or services to mitigate these weaknesses.
5. Predict Top Products
Determine your best selling products for the last 12 months, as well as the "flagship" items. Then check inventory levels & contact suppliers based on predictions you will make on sales for this season. You also want to make sure you are not left out of stock after Black Friday, leaving you in scrambles for Christmas.
6. Plan Inventory Strategy
We all want high levels of traffic & lots of sales, but what happens when you get TOO many sales? You run out of stock, shoppers get frustrated & you get back reviews. Make sure to have a real count on your inventory & a strategy in place for Out of Stock.
7. Mobile & Speed Optimization
Make sure your store is mobile optimized, as it is where the majority of your shoppers will come from & on a day of high volume shopping they will have LESS patience for mistakes. This goes hand in hand with slow loading times. So make sure to clean up the code & get rid of any left-over app snippets in your theme.
8. Theme Update
With all changes & updates happening on Shopify, it's important to make sure you have the latest version of your theme to not risk any incompatibilities with Shopify. If your theme has been customized, this needs to be done carefully by a developer & then thoroughly tested!
9. Have Data Tracking in Place
Do you have Google Analytics set up? Pixel in place? How about an app to track real shopper behavior so you can watch the videos back? These kinds of insights help tremendously to improve your site for Black Friday, but also to later make updates after seeing how all this traffic behaves, to improve CRO before Christmas!
10. Test, Test, Test!
Don't just test the buttons on your homepage, test all possible flows from when a shopper enters your page to when they checkout. Also test all of the email flows to make sure they work at the time & behavior as they should.